It takes a village to empower one.
Danielle Edwards, Field Services Specialist; serving Alexian customers face-to-face
Ben Whalen, Supervisor, Technical Support; delivering custom support to an entire village
Tucked away high atop Signal Mountain rests Alexian Village, a booming retirement community. Like any of our 58,000 plus customers, they wanted and deserved excellent Internet, video and phone services. And they weren’t getting it, at least not from their current providers. That’s where Scott Brewster comes in. As one of the key members of our outside sales team, he’s the first of many EPB employees who rose to the occasion and didn’t just promise great service, but tirelessly worked to deliver it. Scott knew that when it came to customer service, EPB would outshine any competitor. And if we could bring fiber optics to Chattanooga, EPB could certainly innovate and problem solve our way around the potential complexity of an endeavor this size. So the sales team joined forces with the operations team to create a package of services, and a plan for implementing them that was perfectly suited for the specific needs of the Alexian residents.
There was really only one approach that made sense. Tackle this job like this village was its own city. We ran over 5.5 miles of fiber. We created and customized channels. We met with each customer face to face to explain products, determine their specific needs and show them how to work their devices. Anything and everything we would do if this were a little city, we did.
Just over 6 months and nearly 50 EPB employees later, the over 533 apartments, units, rooms and common areas that make up this community on the mountain, were wired for fiber optics.
It was no easy task, but above-and-beyond jobs usually aren’t. But the EPB culture of innovation and superior customer service wouldn’t dream of doing things any other way.
Leave everything in mint condition.
Aaron Sheppard, Alexian Village Director of Facility Services, couldn’t wait to share his favorite EPB awesome customer service story. And here’s why. There are several clusters of units in Alexian. In order to run fiber to one particular cluster, installers needed access to an attic in one specific apartment. The woman who lived there graciously allowed installers to work for days on end within her home. On their last day of installation, the tail end of a ladder sideswiped a little clay pot of mint and accidentally sent it crashing to the floor. The installers couldn’t apologize enough as they cleaned it up. The sweet resident assured them that it was fine; the mint was struggling anyway and to not worry about it. They took her advice. They didn’t worry about it. Instead, they did something about it. The very next morning they presented her with a lush, homegrown mint plant in a beautiful, new ceramic pot. That’s not going the extra mile, that’s crushing it.
